Dandelion
by Cloverfield
Summary: Moments between them were as seeds, blown on the wind. Aoshi. Misao. Citric. No timeline. Romance, of a sort.


**DISCLAIMER: **If the kenshingumi belonged to me, there would be many, many mini-ninja girls with long braids running around calling Aoshi 'Daddy-sama'.

**PREFACE:** possibly AU and slightly out of character, considering that manga-Aoshi is, at best, repressed.

Misao. Aoshi. Citric, slight angst (with Aoshi, there is _always_ angst). Romance, of a sort.

* * *

**Dandelion.**

_

* * *

_She blunted his sharp edges. She always had, and it was curious to him that she and only she could do so, where many others had failed before. 

She laughed at him, pressed soft fingers to his lips. She skipped. She smiled, and tweaked his nose, and her eyes sparkled when she thought he didn't notice.

Which she did, for the most part; he could tell she thought he gave her no notice at all.

Which was untrue, yet he saw no reason to disillusion her of her assumptions. It was easier, after all, to have her believe that he did not care, or that such care he gave could not be accredited to affection.

Surely, logically, if he did not appear to love her, she would not love him, and would not mourn his loss.

Of such assumptions is hubris made.

**

* * *

**He was carving the words into her with every stroke of flesh, with every brush of mouth against skin pliant and wet, with the gaze that swallowed her whole and didn't pause to chew. 

He devoured her, taught her things that she –in her naïveté- had thought she was ready to know.

She wasn't. But, oh, she wouldn't have him stop for all the world.

His lips were against her neck.

How had she ever, ever, _ever_ thought him cold? This was heat in essence; her bones molten and oozing under his fingertips, her blood gone to steam.

He was burning her up, aflame and inside her and she could not bear it.

But she could. For just a few seconds more. Just a little _more_...

Three fingers dug into the flesh of her thigh, pulling her nearer.

She whimpered, and he swallowed it, teased another from her with a wicked tongue and swallowed that too, with apparent relish.

There had been pain, but that was long past, and she could not swear it had ever been there at all.

She was broken now, and so was he; far beyond the point of reassembly, their pieces far too confused for any hope of separation and distinction between them.

He moved and tugged her, against all apparent reason, closer.

Surely there was no way to be closer than this?

His hips shifted, settling into a rhythm that her body raced to follow, and she knew that there was; oh, _Kami_, there _was_.

His teeth scraped her ear, and his hand melted into the flesh of her back, broad fingertips gouging into her with sweet roughness.

She screamed, and did not see the triumph in those lidded eyes; could not, in fact, see past the starburst of flame and sparks in the warm red darkness behind tightly scrunched eyelids.

The single thought she had to spare wavered between wondering whether it was her legs that shook against the floorboards or the floorboards that shook against her legs and sheer, unadulterated, pleasure.

She screamed again, and it availed her not; he did not stop.

He would not stop for some twenty minutes; not until he was thoroughly satisfied his point was proven, and he would only then allow her a moment's rest before seeking to engrave the lesson she had learnt into her, via the medium of their naked, flushed bodies.

And again, when she was screaming, he would stop, wait for her to regain some semblance of control and then, once more, start over.

He had always been an efficient teacher; normally one repetition of any lesson taught was enough.

Even so, he had to be sure.

**

* * *

**He had been unsure as to when the tradition had first started, which was unusual enough for him; he was, if not obsessive, then at the very least fixed on the idea that no date of any significant event should elude him. 

He supposed that he had been young then, and had not realised the latent importance in such a small gesture; even so, such a lapse in concentration –even by his younger self- was surely unforgivable.

As it was, her soft steps drew closer.

She walked differently with this task than all of her others. Her footsteps were an indication of mood, sobriety and the importance of the situation at hand.

Soft, as not to lose steady pace on unsteady floor boards. Quiet, as not to disturb him, but certainly loud enough to alert him of her coming presence. Delicately placed, as though she carried something precious.

(Which, to her at least, she did.)

With closed eyes he paused in his contemplation for the soft knock, and the rattle of the shoji, followed by the gentle _click_ of clay to wood.

A susurration of cloth and hair and she bowed, braid slumping over her shoulder to swing delicately back and forth.

"Tea, Aoshi-sama."

He did not reply, and she left, leaving no physical impression of her presence.

If he strained himself, he could perhaps catch the whisper of her soap-scent, but to do so would be to admit that he _wanted_ to catch it, _wanted_ to know the way her scent tasted, know the chemical tang of her soap so that he could distinguish it from the sweetness of her skin...

He stopped his thoughts there.

Shinomori Aoshi was a man of restraint. He would not admit to any such desire.

Even so, he had never been able to stop the finest slit between his lashes as he watched her shadow depart, door sliding shut.

He could not, _would_ not stop himself from catching that final, evanescent glimpse of her.

Aoshi unfolded himself with utter grace, and sipped on his tea, reflecting on the nature of denial.

**

* * *

**She had been, if not forbidden, then... _discouraged_ from watching him practice. 

The few times in her youth that he had returned to their inn, she had been his shadow.

He had watched her impassively, giving neither sign of disapproval nor approval, but she had followed him. He made no move to stop her, but would not aid her in her pursuit either.

To a seven year old Misao, it hadn't mattered.

Practice-time, however, had been different.

Forcibly restrained, she would be lead away, leaving him the solitude and reasonable quiet of the training room. Distracted by her four minders, often with stories and tricks of remarkable, athletic feats, she would not notice his absence until he returned, composed and entirely insouciant. That was not to say she had not tried to watch him; she had crept away many times, employing what little skills she possessed as a child-shinobi, but always, inevitably, caught.

She had only ever been able to avoid recapture once, but it had been enough and certainly well worth the punishment of having to polish every floorboard in the whole inn for a week afterwards.

He was water, he was fire. He was earth and air and soul. He was the universe in fluid movement, power condensed in human form.

His body flexed in lean perfection, dark hair whipping to follow graceful, blurred speed; feet sure on mats dark with sweat.

His eyes were closed in absolute concentration, and he moved with utter surety in his abilities.

It was no wonder she had slipped from her precarious hold on the roof beams and tumbled to the mats at his feet.

He had not stopped. His movements continued; motion precisely timed to some cosmic beat that she, even with years of training, could never hope to follow.

He reached completion even as she struggled to stand, her child's body trembling from the impact of the fall and the lancing pain through her wrist.

He was kami, and she could only watch as sweat slid down his patrician's nose to patter onto thin, ascetic lips.

He knelt before her, exposed muscle rippling through wet fabric, under skin that glistened with oil. His hands had closed about her arms and pulled her –forcibly but not painfully so- upright, bracing her against his chest, warm fingers probing the broken bone.

She did not make a sound, _would _not make a sound in front of him and shame herself so, but it _hurt_, and she could not stop the whimper that pressed against her lips.

Unexpectedly, he sighed, rocked back on his heels and pressed her down onto his knees, her arm flailing out to catch on his chest.

Startled, Misao would have jumped but for the warm, slippery flesh beneath her palm. His chin rested heavily on her shoulder, one arm straying to curl around her waist, the other wrenching a strip of fabric from his sleeve.

"Be brave. This will hurt."

There was a _click_ of bone, and she cried out, tears streaking down to trickle into the mess of dark hair that clung to his neck, even as he bound her wrist with precise efficiency.

He stood, seamlessly adjusting her small weight, and carried her to her minders, pained and more than a little overwhelmed.

She bore the lectures without complaint, the treatment for a broken wrist with nary a murmur, and the indignity of being punished in silence.

Even now, reflecting on that moment was enough to loose a shiver upon her.

**

* * *

**

She lay before him now, splay legged and utterly vulnerable. If he chose to, no doubt he could wreak immense damage on her delicate, slender form.

It was, however, not in his best interests, so he did not, but instead smoothed damp locks from a swollen, panting mouth. Her lips trembled against the brush of his fingertips.

She was frightened, he could tell that much, and unsure of the meaning of this interlude, if ever there was one; no doubt she, in the time she had idolised him, had forgotten that he was just a man –a talented one, a powerful one, and extremely skilled, but a man nonetheless, and prone to a weakening of resolve in the face of desire.

-(which had plagued him for some time now, never in anything so crass as dreams, but in an insistent notion that there was something here as yet unclaimed- some resource that he and _only _he should tap and hopefully ease the flickering, twisting ache which had settled in the hollow of his chest.)-

It would make sense to her to accredit this to something she had or had not done; place the reasoning behind her current state –naked, trembling, and littered with markings from hands, lips and teeth- upon her shoulders, rather than his.

He curled one hand around her left calf, smoothing fingers up a well-muscled leg, almost capable of encircling finger to thumb about the width of her thigh. She shivered again, and her head was cushioned only by the mass of hair that pooled beneath her as it _thunked_ back onto the floorboards.

Her lips were parted, and if it were cold, he knew he would see short, puffing clouds of breath from her sharp, shallow gasps. The image pleased him; as primitive as the ideal was, he did like to see her breathless because of him.

One finger of the hand curled neatly around her thigh brushed moist, quivering flesh. Her eyes closed, pink tongue flicking out to moisten dry lips.

He wondered if she had learnt her lesson yet.

If not, perhaps he would have to improvise.

**

* * *

**

There were many words she could have used to describe his hands, but inevitably, the mind returned to this one: big.

His hands were large, for all that they were graceful; his fingers were long, slender and tapered to a point. His fingernails were short and blunt as most men's were.

She had seen those hands do many things, some contradictory and at times painful.

Her grandfather's blood had drenched those hands once.

-(although, in reality, that had not been quite true- there had been blood, more than any human body should ever lose, but only a small amount of it had spattered his hands, his face, his swords. But she had seen the desire for _more_ blood in terribly blank eyes, and knew he would bathe in it if the thought so struck him.)-

Those hands had also rested themselves –gently, hesitantly- on her hair before, soothing her from a child's dreams best unremembered.

She wondered which image was, to him, more potent.

**

* * *

**He had, against all prior expectations, noticed her steady progression from child to woman. 

Although he appeared blindly oblivious, he was not so; his skills of observation were not so weak as not to notice convexities and concavities that had never before been present in her small frame.

Truthfully speaking, her outfit had done little to disguise the sloping, rounded dips and swells of her slender body; a point that her grandfather noticed and lectured her on many, many times, each tirade ignored more blithely than the last.

He suspected she knew very well why she had been ordered into kimono in public; he also suspected that her reasons for disregarding such were little more than childish pique.

Even if she did manage –with wide, guileless eyes- to protest innocence on the nature of those stares directed her way by many young men, the wicked little smile that would flicker briefly over a small, delicate mouth suggested otherwise.

He did not worry for her honour, though.

Any young man whose thoughts (and any other part of him) strayed would no doubt find themselves on the receiving end of Okina's quite formidable skills.

There was a reason he was feared.

-(a treacherous and oft-unheeded part of him knew that no man would dare anything indecent; _his_ reputation was spread in quiet, sombre whispers and much, much more threatening than the salacious gossip of the old man's.)-

As it was, he would not intervene in her choice of clothing; she was, after all, a grown woman and most capable of handling the consequences of such.

No matter what those consequences may be.

**

* * *

**His skin was impossibly slick and sticky at the same time. She could trail her fingertips over him quite smoothly, but any motion of hers to pull away resulted in her flesh clinging to him, parting with slow gravity, if at all. 

If there was irony in life, then surely this was an example.

He was not sleeping, and she thought this to be quite unfair. From all that she had heard, he was supposed to be asleep now; vulnerable, and entirely open to attack.

Not that she had the energy to muster any.

It was, in fact, quite impressive that she was awake now herself; true, she had dozed a little, but that didn't matter.

He shifted then, and quite suddenly his heart beat echoed through her back, her body cradled between muscled thighs and large, warm hands.

One splayed, spider-like, beneath her ribs; his thumb brushed the underside of her breast, making her tremble a little.

His breath sighed against her hair, and that made her tremble more.

Her train of thought was scattered, now; whatever she had been considering –escape, possibly- was lost to her. As other things. Like her protestations of innocence.

She could not claim now that none of this was her fault.

His other hand curled, slowly, languidly around her thigh. A gesture from hours –days, minutes?- before was brought to mind with shocking clarity, and she flushed, dull heat snaking up her neck.

"Hmph."

That sound could have been a snort, a half-chuckle, anything really; the arm that pulled her tighter to him, pressing her against firm, toned flesh and skin as hot as sun-warmed metal was far more obvious. So too the chin that rested on her shoulder, the brush of his hair against her cheek, and the words he mouthed, so slowly, lips against her neck.

"_Mine_. Now. Then. _Always_."

The bare floorboards were cool and pressed, sanded-smooth, against her.

**

* * *

**His dreams were sparse, and never detailed. He did not dream of murder, of blood, of men that died in short, violent gasps of blade through throat; there was no remorse for life taken. 

He slept peacefully. He never felt unease. He was tainted, surely; tarnished beyond any thought of repair, but acceptance of such was not an invitation to regret. His choices had been made; he could not recant them now, and hope for the best.

He had done what he done for a reason.

It would not do for him to feel guilty for his actions. Not now. Not ever.

"Aoshi-sama? You're staring at the door. Is something wrong?"

He blinked; it was not often that she caught him off guard.

-(which was untrue; her actions surprised him more than he was willing to acknowledge. It would not do for him to admit the assumption he knew her completely, from her tiny feet to the top of her dark head, was utterly, entirely, wrong.)-

"No, Misao."

"Okay."

The rustle of cloth as she shrugged seemed loud in the silence of a near-empty kitchen. Her chopsticks clicked against her bowl, scraping for the few grains of rice that remained.

He watched her eat, watched her small mouth close around lacquered wood, her lips pressed shut.

She swallowed, and he could not help but follow the motion down, resting his gaze on the hollow of her throat.

She swallowed again, nervously, as though she felt the weight of his speculation pressing against her skin.

He looked up, and her eyes widened slowly, almost fearfully.

Did she know where her simple actions led his thoughts? Did she understand? Did she recognise heat, pooling in her belly as it did his?

Her cheeks were flushed. Her breathing: louder, faster. Pupils dilated- dark pooling in her eyes. Her mouth opened, closed, and opened again; a pink tongue moistened dry lips.

She was trembling.

And all he had done was meet her gaze.

The chopsticks clattered to the bench, followed by a gently rocking bowl.

"Uh, gotta go, Aoshi-sama- chores and all that. G'bye!"

She left. He watched, and did not turn away as her braid snaked around the door before it slammed shut, cutting her from his sight.

His lips twisted. It could have been a smile.

This, too, he would not regret.

**

* * *

**

Sometimes, in quiet moments spent observing him, she wondered what he could have become had he not been born into this part of the world.

She had heard, on the strange western device known as a _Gramo-phonu_, the crackling, eerily beautiful music of men long dead, whose genius extended beyond words and numbers and into the realm of emotion through sound.

All of those men, whose names she could not pronounce, had been ingenious beyond the ken of their contemporaries; she did not doubt that, had he been born amongst them, his works would have far surpassed theirs.

Would those hands have crafted sound such as this from wood and string? Would those fingers exerted gentle pressure on keys cared from ivory and bone, and produced creation, distilled into tinkling notes?

Would he, in circumstances different from the ones he knew, have made so many mistakes?

Would a mind such as his never have gone to such a bloody waste?

-(for his martial arts were as close to perfection as one could humanly achieve, and his movements in battle were terribly, violently beautiful; enough to steal, if not one's breath, than perhaps their life in payment for his delicate, deadly spectacle.)-

An artist –for that is what he was, in all aspects of his being- should never have had to kill.

**

* * *

**

Her hands were tiny, as was the rest of her; the proportions of her body exquisitely delicate and doll-like.

That did not stop her from fighting with the enthusiasm of a man twice her size; he had seen targets –large, small and hidden- fall to a snap of a slender wrist and the sudden, blurring speed of sharp metal.

He was rather proud of her; she had taken to the sly, shadowed way their kind fought the way she had taken to all her other endeavours- enthusiastically and developed the skill to show for it, even at such a young age.

Pride did not stop him from hoping, occasionally and more than a little idly, that those small, skilled hands would learn other talents; such thoughts were stilled as quickly as they came.

What would she do? Paint? She had neither the patience nor the disposition.

Her instrumental talents were not worth mentioning. Nor could she sew.

She had never professed to be lyrical, or shown any ability to sing more than the short, bawdy ditties his men had taught her.

If he had believed in conspiracies, he would have accredited this to one. How was it that he, of all the hundreds that could have taken her in, had been the one to do so? He, the most warlike of them all, becoming guardian of a child whose talents laid in their shadow world?

"Look, Aoshi-sama! Got 'em all!"

She bounced happily on the spot, braid swinging around her in snapping, whip-like motions, gesturing excitedly to dozens of targets, each punctured by a single, sharp kunai vibrating in the central mark.

Behind her, Hyottoko rumbled praise and Hannya clapped appreciatively.

-(he would wonder, in later years, when he and the others were long gone from this warm place, why exactly his men had taken to her so well. She their favourite 'niece', and they, her mismatched uncles. Such thoughts would not linger long with him, bringing to mind sharp, almost painful nostalgia and so would be discarded in an act of self-preservation.)-

"Beshimi-sempai says he's gonna teach me to throw poison darts next!"

He repressed the urge to sigh. Later, he would have words with the man regarding the wisdom of teaching a child of eight how to use poison, but for now, her brilliant (if almost ruthless) smile as she dispatched target after target was enough to still thoughts of reprimand in him.

**

* * *

**

She supposed she wanted to punish him. Hadn't she always, on some level, felt he was getting away with something that she, herself, could never hope to?

Water sloshed around her ankles, soaking the floorboards and _swooshing_ away soapy, bubbly puddles that lay on saturated wood, leaving her with clean floor.

Her knees were wet. She ignored them in favour for hitching up her shorts and rocking back on bare, damp feet.

The problem was that he, although certainly deserving of some form of retribution, would most certainly know what she was up to.

-(even as a child, he oft predicted her mischief before it was committed, and although she never once saw or heard of him turning her in, he would offer no sympathy when she was inevitably caught or delivered what Jiya referred to gleefully as "preemptive punishment".)-

The mats needed to be beaten, and the shutters opened; the floor would never dry otherwise.

Sometime later, she paced on cool, just-dry wood.

She would need to be careful. She did not want to be pinned under that gaze again. Not with that _look_.

Heat shivered up from the soles of her feet, leaving puckered, tingling skin. Something, like a warm stone, slid down her chest and landed in her belly. It sat there, and she slid her fingers cross skin, beneath cloth, to touch it.

The _shruuuum_ and _click_ of the training room door closing was very loud, and she started, like her younger self caught in the act of some trick.

She did not flush though; her gaze met his. She would not be ashamed. She had done nothing wrong- no matter what his eyes on her skin sought to imply.

-(bare feet, bare legs, bare arms; shirt rumpled and tugged up where her hand cupped her stomach, shorts clinging to small hips; clothing damp, spots of moisture on her skin, a wisp of hair clinging to her smooth cheek...)-

Her fingertips were branding her.

She squared her shoulders, her hand slipped down to dangle at her side. She looked away.

"I've done nothing-"

"I know."

She tried again.

"You shouldn't-"

"I want to."

His answer was not to her question; it was something between them, no longer unsaid.

"...why?"

"I'll show you."**

* * *

**

With thanks to Ms Western Ink for help during the editing process.

Reviews always welcome.


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